iOS 13 Photos sync through iTunes causes duplicate photos on iOS devices

It is important to me. So much so I have spent my time ensuring I get the results I want.....rather than asking a new system to do something obsolete.

i have lived in Appleworld for 30 years. I ******* about leaving Claris etc behind. Same w early iPods, Airports etc.

legacy thinking doesn’t alter anything.

the Future starts now! With what we have, and we build with that.

So since I’ve gotten my MBP 2019 16” back from service and had to reinstall the os from time machine - no duplicates.... I’ve been using it for a few week now and just decided to dreadingly add some photos to a folder on the Mac and sync - I’ve waited just bc I didn’t want the hastle of waiting hours to finish and The duplicates. Well, so the folder wouldn’t sync and did not show up on the phone - no error message or anything, just didn’t go. I tried twice. I then moved the new folder from its spot on the MBP to another folder and synced again. This time. Got the question do you want to remove photos on the phone and replace them....... blah blah blah. I said yes. I have about 9k photos and this type of sync fro the past 2 years now had started taking hours. This time, about 20 minutes and the photos were on the phone - all 9k and the new ones in the right spot no duplicates. I then moved the folder on the computer to its correct spot and synced again. Again, wow, really surprised here, it took only 2 minutes or so, a progress bar and all in finder to show status, pictures showed in the phone and no dupes anywhere for whatever reason - I shocked and am hoping this isn’t just some weird aberration bc we watched Outlander last night. Now the only bit of bad news - the phone has been locked and plugged in all night checking favorites, duplicates, etc. Doesn’t look like that progress has moved at all..... I do not use cloud for photos or the photos app and I sync in finder using cable. I’m on the 2nd most recent os and the latest iOS.

Hi to all,

I have been confronted with this problem of photo duplicates for a few months when synchronizing my iPhone under iOS 13 with my MacBook Pro under Mojave and it appears I finally fixed it today !

I realized that I had ticked the synchronisation of many albums, including "People". I had also chosen "synchronise all the photos of last year". But once I unticked all that, the next sync deleted all the duplicates.

Actually, most of the photos stay inside the iPhone because they remain in the album "recent" of the iPhone, whether or not you synchronise albums from your Mac or not.

When you select albums of your Mac for synchronizing, the photos of this album are duplicated on the iPhone.

So deleting all these album options before synchronizing allows all the duplicates to disappear.

As I didn't started yet on iOS 14 or Catalina (or Big Sur), this solution was welcome.

I hope it will work on your side too if your are faced with the same situation.

Having this issue on Win 10 PC and my iPhone and ipad pro. Many duplicates in camera roll.

It isn't a Mac problem. It is IOS 13 issue.

If you don’t have that many photos it works great - but I have 15,000 - so doing this takes almost all day... which kills the battery.

This issue is entirely an ios bug. It has nothing to do with the Mac or Mac OS. Nothing.

Just synced again and behold, more duplicates! When will it stop...

👍🏿👍🏿

photos not syncing well

Yep, I'm getting the same thing: updated to iOS14, synced up, and it looks like the duplicates have gone - certainly can't see any in the synced albums where I was aware of them before. Great news!